History in the Making

'68 Olympic Trials Marathon changed the course of American running

Nearly 40 years ago, a dusty, high plains Colorado college town made American running history.

The 1968 Olympic Team Trials Marathon was the first of its kind in the U.S. Previously, American marathon teams were chosen by a committee that relied heavily on performances at the Boston and Yonkers marathons. But the powers that be in U.S. running wanted to determine which runners would run well at the high altitude of Mexico City, host of the ‘68 Summer Games, and were considering four possible sites.

Although Adams State College had a strong running program, Alamosa wasn’t yet known as a training hub for elite athletes. But Dr. Joe Vigil, the school’s legend-in-the-making track and cross country coach, and Buddy Edelen, the American marathon record-holder and Adams State psychology professor, helped a local steering committee convince AAU officials that Alamosa’s 7,500-foot elevation would be an ideal place for such a race.

So on the morning of August 18, 1968 — just nine weeks before the Olympic race in Mexico City — more than 80 U.S. runners, including many who would become icons in the first golden age of American running, toed the line on a hot and desiccating day in tiny, out-of-the-way Alamosa (population 7,000) for the country’s first Olympic Trials Marathon.

The race started in the small downtown section of Alamosa, then sent runners on five dry and dusty loops of about five miles each, followed by another mile to the finish line on the Adams State campus. The terrain was virtually flat, and so open one could see back to the buildings at the start from the farthest point on the loop. There were occasional gusts of wind out on the course but little shade to protect runners from the scorching sun.

Unlike the five-loop course of this year’s Olympic Team Trials Marathon in New York City, where as many as 100,000 are expected to watch the race, the setup of the ‘68 trials race was not unlike your local 10K.

Vigil, who served as the race director, had a miniscule budget — a stark contrast to the $1.1 million budget of this year’s race in Central Park.

“Most of each loop we were alone with our competitors,” recalls two-time Olympian Kenny Moore, who finished second in Alamosa. “There was a vocal group of supporters every time through town, but nothing like there would be today. The running time was called out to us every five miles. Since we were at altitude and would be running slower, times weren’t exactly without meaning, but they were secondary. It was how you felt that mattered. Every time we came back through the little town center, friends and supporters were there to hand us liquids.”

This year’s trials marathon will no doubt feature scientifically tested hydration stations offering individually prepared bottles for each of the elites. For the Alamosa race, Moore, then 24, followed an untested but effective theory.

“I knew altitude enhances dehydration, so I drank an ice-cold, not very defizzed Coke every five miles, and other water when offered on the course,” he says.

Amby Burfoot, who won the 1968 Boston Marathon and might have been a favorite to earn an Olympic berth had he not been injured, notes that the sport’s place in public perception was still in its genesis. “1968 was the first time a car drove by me and I heard some kid say to his mother, ‘Look, mom, there’s a jogger,’” he recalls.

Burfoot had shown up early with several dozen other runners for a two-month training camp, although from his accounts it was more like a POW camp than a program for elite athletes. He and his fellow training campers were billeted “in a dark, dank, cheap dorm, with everyone’s room festooned with damp underwear and running clothes that we were trying to dry out before the next workout — no technical clothing then, all cotton.”

In Alamosa, Burfoot struggled to train consistently because of a nagging pulled gluteal muscle, an injury he sustained during his one and only steeplechase experience in the final race of his Wesleyan College career. He says he’d run 30 miles one day, only to be so hobbled that he’d have to take the next day off. “Then I’d try to make up for it with another 30-mile day,” he says.

The group was a collection of young men thrown together in the strange cauldron of Alamosa. With a shared passion for running and the dream of making the Olympic team, it created a bond among runners.

But it also created a rather fidgety atmosphere, knowing that the lucky among them were going to make the team, the unlucky majority were going to have to get on with their lives. It was two months of training for a one-shot race.

There were check-off calendars on room doors. The race was looming and time passed slowly with nothing to do but run and hang out in a dorm.

“Everyone was eager to get the race over with, so they could return home and try to remember if they had a real life to live,” Burfoot says. “I think I was in shock the whole time I was in Alamosa — I was too young, too scared and too injured.”

Moore, meanwhile, showed up the day before the marathon, race-fit and ready to roll. The 1967 AAU cross country champion and former University of Oregon All-American had been training since March in the 7,300-foot elevation of Los Alamos, NM, with the hopes of making the U.S. team in the 10,000-meter run.

When he and coach Bill Bowerman learned that the other trials competitors would only have two months of altitude training in Alamosa, they figured it made sense for Moore to try his luck at the marathon, too. His arrival was stealth by design.

“My tactics of being the mysterious outsider kept me from hearing any talk about favorites,” he said. “I didn’t meet Frank Shorter until a year later and didn’t know Amby at all. I was a Westerner.”

Shorter, who would win Olympic marathon gold four years later in Munich and silver in ‘76, was still a rank amateur among amateurs in Alamosa. These were the last purely open trials where anyone who got there was permitted to run for a chance to qualify for the Olympic team.

“The night before the race, Frank knocked on my door, said he had come down to try the marathon and had no road shoes,” Burfoot recalls. “He asked if he could borrow a pair of mine. I told him ‘It’s pretty risky to wear shoes you’ve never worn before in a 26-mile race.’”

Shorter, then a 20-year-old Yale junior, found out how risky the next day. He ran until the borrowed racing flats ripped his feet apart, leaving him with a DNF for his first attempt at the marathon.

The 22-year-old Burfoot didn’t fare any better. His race ended when he dropped out after three laps.

“My actual race was a complete implosion,” Burfoot recalls. “I never got going, never moved up through the pack as I hoped I would at some point, and felt the pulled muscle with every step. There was no hope, so I quit at 15 miles.”

He went back out to watch the finishers come in, standing next to the wife of eventual third-place finisher Ron Daws. She was trying to take pictures but was crying and trembling with the excitement of her husband’s Olympic team berth.

Moore entered the race with about the 25th fastest PR, a 2:26 effort from a time trial in 1965. But in his mind, he believed he was a favorite because of his altitude training. More succinctly, he was an Olympic hopeful because “that was the only reason to race.”

His race unfolded almost ideally. He led until about four miles to go, when George Young, an accomplished 31-year-old Olympic steeplechaser, made a decisive move and ran away with the victory in 2:30:48. Moore gingerly held on to second, with legs twinging all the way.

“By then, I was getting little pre-cramps in both hamstrings, so I let him go,” Moore says. “I wasn’t really exhausted, but boy was I dehydrated.”

Afterward, the award ceremony was held on the Adams State campus with Daws, Moore and Young gimpily accepting their congratulations on stiff legs. No trophies, no money. Their prize was a trip to Mexico City.

Despite having just 63 days between the trials race in Alamosa and the 1968 Olympic marathon, George Young, Kenny Moore, and Ron Daws turned in respectable performances south of the border. Moore finished 14th (2:29:49) among the 74 runners in the field, followed by Young (16th, 2:31:15) and Daws (22nd, 2:33:53). Still, surviving the awkwardness and the unknown of that first trials race proved a much tougher feat than the contenders had anticipated.

“George Young and I (were) in the Adams State gym shower, after the race but before the awards ceremony, both of us cramping so badly we were doubled over,” Moore recalls. “I can’t remember which of us said it, but we agreed if the race had been two miles longer, we wouldn’t have made the team.”